Thursday, January 26, 2012

Closing The Sale

I went back to the store to talk to Pamela a few times and she was always too busy to talk business. Meanwhile I was getting nowhere with my budding side career of selling ad time for the station. Thankfully I was getting good feedback from people, including my boss, about my on-air exploits. And that was, after all, what was really important. This sales gig was just a way to kill time in the afternoon every day-- to keep me out of trouble. Mostly the trouble I was staying out of was a 17 year old waitress at the diner. But if things didn't start looking up on the female front she was going to turn 18 and then I'd be out of excuses to keep from taking a run at her. Mandy was kind of cute. Sweet, sorta dumb, stacked, and cute.

I dropped by Pamela's Place for Gifts around 4 PM on a Monday. Pam saw me come through the door and strolled over to me.

“Can you come by at noon tomorrow?”

“Yeah... but aren't you closed between noon and one on Tuesdays?”

“It looks like it's the only way we'll be able to talk and everything. Just try to get here a couple minutes before noon so I don't lock you out, OK?” she said.

The next morning I got off the air at 10AM and spent an hour making sure I was ready to close the sale and get Pamela's ads on the air. Then I walked across the highway to the gas station and got a bag of chips and a Coke for lunch from their vending machines. Hey, my commission from a flight of spots for Pamela's Place for Gifts would just about cover two days worth of chips. (Clearly, this wasn't about the money.)

I washed the potato chip grease off my hands back at the radio station restroom and drove into town. After parking a couple doors down I popped into her shop five minutes before noon. By ten after twelve Pamela had the customers out, the door locked, and we were walking to the back room of the shop making small talk.

Most backrooms of retail stores are dirty, cluster-fucked places. This one was orderly. She unlocked the door to her private office-- a room about 12 X 12 with a beautiful wooden desk, high-back chair, and a small couch. Pamela turned on the lights-- not the harsh overhead fluorescent but a floor lamp and a desk lamp. I was such a rookie at the time in the business world that I didn't recognize that everything I was seeing added up to someone who wasn't in business to scratch out a living.

I took a seat on the couch as she excused herself to use the restroom. The five minutes or so I waited for her to return seemed like a half hour. I'm not sure what all she did while I waited but she definitely had brushed her hair and freshened her scent. Right up to that point I had seen Pamela as a very attractive, friendly, engaging woman. But, I figured her to be about ten years older than me and not really somebody who would have any interest in a fresh-out-of-college guy like me. I had no problem thinking about her as an aid to my self-pleasuring activities, but that's not quite the same as thinking of her in terms of dinner and a movie. The idea of an older woman and a younger man together wasn't unheard of-- hell, I'd seen The Graduate back when I was in high school. But, let's just say I understood the Katharine Ross part of that movie a lot more than the Anne Bancroft part from Dustin's point-of-view. Then again, Pamela was way cooler, and younger, than Anne Bancroft.

She had me put the sales materials I'd brought along on her desk and I delivered my spiel as we stood side by side. Pamela was to my right and when I asked her if she had any questions she leaned across me as she spoke and pointed at one of my charts using her right hand. As she did that her left breast pressed against my right biceps. I noticed but didn't exactly jump out of the way. In fact, I kind of held my ground. A few minutes later she did it again. She was out of questions then and said, “Well, you made the sale, Billy. Good job.” She rubbed my back with her left hand as she said, “You can relax now. I'll write a check for the first week of ads, OK?”

She walked around the desk, sat in her big boss chair, and pulled a folder out of the desk drawer that contained her company checks. “Three spots on Thursday, three Friday, and two on Saturday-- all during your show,” Pamela said.

She scratched out the check for the correct amount. She had been paying attention to my sales pitch.

I told her I'd call her later and let her hear the commercial I was going back to the station to write and record. She smiled at me like she had a big secret that I couldn't possibly guess. Partly a smirk, partly a smile-- all very knowing.

She walked me to the front door of the store and unlocked it. Before she let me out Pamela said, “We'll take this one week at a time to see how it works out. Is there a problem with you coming here every Tuesday at noon so we can go over any changes to the ad copy... number of spots... anything else that comes up?”

“No. That's no problem. It comes under the heading of servicing your account,” I said.

She laughed out loud. I was embarrassed. I hadn't meant it to sound dirty. I started out the door.

"Oh, and Billy... from now on park a few blocks away from the store and knock on the back door off the alley at 12:15... every Tuesday, OK?"

"Sure," I said. I had no idea why I couldn't park my van in front of the store. I figured she didn't want me taking a parking space that a customer could use.

Driving back to the station I felt like such a goober. I was even trying to talk myself out of the idea that she had flirted with me. I thought about how great she looked and smelled. I heard her voice. And I could still feel her tit pushing against my arm. Soft, but not too soft.

I called her at about 5 o'clock and played the spot for her over the phone. She said it was good. Very good. She was all business. I assumed there were customers in the store.